Future skills

FUTURE SKILLS CURRICULUM

Our bespoke Future Skills Curriculum teaches content and subjectspecifi c skills for each subject whilst also explicitly developing skills, attributes and characteristics to ensure that every boy continually practises these skills and competencies, and refl ects on our school values. We believe that this enables boys to achieve success not only in the Prep School but also as they move up to the Upper School as well as throughout life in general.

Our Future Skills curriculum is supported by a framework that ensures a consistency of provision across all areas of school life: in and out of the classroom, in academic subjects and extracurricular FUTURE SKILLS COMPETITION

Just before the end of the summer term we announced a competition which encouraged the boys to engage with the school’s Future Skills. They were challenged to write a short piece about a time when someone in their family has shown, exemplifi ed, used and embodied one of our Future Skills. Y3 & Y4 boys were asked to write no more than 300 words, Y5 & Y6 no more than 500 words and Y7 & Y8 no more than 1000 words. Pieces had to be submitted by Friday 25th June. Judging happened over the summer holidays (and winners were announced at the start of the Autumn Term 2021). The winner from each year group won £20 and the overall winner was awarded £50. The competition provoked some outstanding responses. Inspiring stories abounded. A number of boys chose to write about a disabled relative. We heard about a family member with autism who shines through her diffi culties. Another family member, cousin Jonathan, showed endeavour, plus many other incredible attributes. He was born with cerebral palsy, which left him unable to communicate via speech. Nonetheless, he learnt to write with his eyes, with the aid of technology, writing a stunning memoir, “Eyes Can Write” (which I encourage you to read). He also set up the charity “Teach Us Too”. Grandparents featured heavily. One grandad defused explosives underneath Benouville Bridge during Operation Overlord in World War Two. His story sat alongside more homespun accounts of a grandpa, dubbed Captain Kindness, who raised money for charity, and was Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Bedfordshire, and a grandmother who lives on her own, helping her neighbours and devoting time to charity. Her grandson felt she deserved the Endeavour Cup! Brothers and sisters feature, too, for doing great work for charity, or just for showing great resilience when things don’t go their way. And a mother who is running a marathon to raise money for vital causes was one of the best told accounts. A huge well done to all of those boys who entered this competition, and thank you for letting us read your stories.

activities too.

We want our Bedford Prep School boys to learn not just new skills and knowledge, but more importantly to learn and refl ect on how they have best learnt, and why processes or strategies have or haven’t worked for them. This is called metacognition, and there is a huge body of published evidence which agrees that teaching children about learning strategies (metacognitive strategies) is one of the most effective ways for progress to be made.

OUR VALUES Bedford School’s fi ve values are Endeavour, Responsibility, Integrity, Curiosity and Kindness, and these values span every year group as well as the whole school. Our Future Skills framework adds six examples (or sub-categories) of ways in which boys can demonstrate each value.

OUR SUPERHEROES To bring the curriculum to life for the boys, we have also developed our own superheroes, who embody our values, and whom our boys love and align themselves to.

ETHOS BEHIND OUR FUTURE SKILLS CURRICULUM In order to help explain the ethos and thinking behind the Future Skills Curriculum, we would like to share with you the following three thoughts on what real education is. ■ The fi rst is by the priest, author and three times winner of the Nobel prize for literature. “The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.” William Inge ■ The second is from civil rights legend, Martin Luther King, Jr. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” Martin Luther King Jr ■ And fi nally, Swiss psychologist, Piaget, known for his work on child development. “The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create people who are capable of doing new things.” Piaget These visionaries were right last century and they are still right now. If we are to prepare our children for their future, our imperative is to help them to be in the words of Piaget, “people who are capable of doing new things.”